UN to Vote on Sending Monitors to Syria’s Aleppo to Oversee Evacuations

Syria, Aleppo News: U.N Security Council to vote of French draft proposal to send monitors to Aleppo

Government of Syria claim rebels broke the evacuation agreement

US says action in “Aleppo indiscriminate slaughter”

---

– VOA News

The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Sunday on whether to send monitors to the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo to oversee evacuations and to help provide protection for civilians who remain.

The council will consider a French draft proposal that voices alarm at the worsening humanitarian crisis in and near the city, and for the “tens of thousands of besieged Aleppo inhabitants” in need of evacuation.

Sunday’s vote, like a half dozen truce proposals considered by the council this year, is expected to draw fire from Syria’s principal ally, Russia, which has vetoed earlier cease-fire proposals.

Monitors say as many as 40,000 civilians and the last remaining rebel fighters waited in vain for evacuation operations to resume Saturday, after the exodus was suspended Friday by the Damascus government. The suspension came after pro-government forces demanded the evacuation of two Shi’ite villages currently under siege by rebels.

Syria’s government also said the rebels broke the evacuation agreement by trying to smuggle heavy weapons and hostages out of Aleppo. The rebels said it was the government side that shattered the truce.

Contrary to earlier reports that evacuations would resume Saturday, monitors from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they had seen no such activity by early Sunday. The observatory had expected 4,000 people to be evacuated from the two Shi’ite villages in a convoy of buses.

Western news agencies quoted families who spent the night Saturday in bombed-out apartment blocks, located near departure points announced earlier by the government, as saying no buses ever appeared.

In Washington Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described events in Aleppo as “indiscriminate slaughter” and a “cynical [government] policy of terrorizing civilians.”

Kerry has repeatedly vowed that the United States would work to save lives and continue pushing all parties in Syria toward a resolution that allows humanitarian groups full access to the country.